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I tried to pull her hand away, but Eva was freakishly strong. “We are now,” I mumbled.
Her face fell, and she backed off to curl into a ball on the other end of the couch. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
I pointed at her. “Then why are you making that face instead of dancing around the room like you did when I told you I might bepregnant?”
She slapped my finger away. “I might have fucked up.”
“Crap, it’s contagious,” I whispered, garnering a dry laugh from her.
“Not that kind of fucked up. Mac and I have had a… thing for a while now.”
She watched me, cataloguing my reaction, and I couldn’t honestly say what I was feeling. Not surprise, not really. I kind of wanted to yellI knew it!but I hadn’t truly considered it a possibility. Eva and Mac had been friends for a lot longer than I’d known them. Wouldn’t they have tried hooking up before now?
I was dying to know how them getting together qualified as a fuckup, but I should probably ease into it. “How long?”
Eva grimaced and dropped her head onto her knees. “Since before you moved in. It was great at first. This fun little secret we had—friends with benefits—and I thought, why didn’t we do this years ago?”
I scooted closer, rubbing her back. “I can safely say we’ve all wondered that.”
“Didn’t seem like a good idea. His parents are hardcore married, like so happy you can’t believe it’s real, and Mac always wanted what they have. I’m a poor little rich girl with absentee parents and no inclination to get married. Ever. I’d destroy him.”
I had so many questions. Did anyone else know? Who started it? What the hell had she been thinking? None of those seemed particularly helpful though. She seemed genuinely upset, or as upset as Eva ever let anyone see.
“What changed?” I asked.
Eva lifted her head and scrunched her nose. “He’s been fucking his way through his junior year, so I thought, maybe he’s let go of the ideal. Maybe we can have some fun without getting caught up.”
“And then you got caught up?”
“Worse. He did.”
I hissed at the implication. Eva wasn’t upset because Mac had broken her heart—she was upset because she was going to break his. Or she already had.
“Why didn’t Mac come out into the hallway earlier?”
My tentative question made her shudder, and I wondered if I should get Noah to check on Mac. Better yet, Noah could handle emotional Eva with his steady presence. I belonged to the get drunk and do something stupid style of working through emotions.
“We had a fight,” she admitted.
Shock dropped my mouth open. I couldn’t imagine Mac fighting with anyone, let alone Eva. Every time I’d seen them disagree, Eva told him how he was supposed to respond, and he fell in line.
As if she could sense my disbelief, she tilted her head to flash me a sad smile. “I know. Mac doesn’t fight—he lives to make people happy—but lately, he’s… not.”
“Happy?”
“I don’t think so. He has emotional needs, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t meet them. Mac is fun, he’s hot, he’s talented, he’s one of my best friends, and the thought of dating him freaks me out so badly I had to borrow my mom’s anxiety medication.”
“Thursday?” She’d cleaned the baseboards then passed out on the couch for ten hours.
“Thursday,” she answered grimly. “Today, he gave me an ultimatum after the game, if you can believe it. Date me or lose the dick. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”
I pressed my lips together until I could control the snicker tickling my throat. The situation really wasn’t funny. “I take it you didn’t agree.”
Eva deflated a little more. “No, and he really thought I would. I could see it in his eyes—the way some of that manic happiness faded when he realized I wasn’t kidding.”
My heart hurt for her, and for him, but right now Eva was my priority. I wasn’t great with heartbreak, and I definitely didn’t know how to deal with someone being the cause instead of the recipient. “Love is complicated. Normally, I’d offer to light his shorts on fire, but that doesn’t seem like the right response here.”
She tilted her head to smile at me, tears glimmering in her eyes. “It’s definitely not, but I appreciate your willingness to jump straight to arson. I do love him, just not the way he deserves to be loved. He deserves all-consuming, uncontrollable love where everything else falls away.”
